More fantastically boring low-tech industrial potential in space:
When an electrical circuit is interrupted, an inductive (magnetic fields, i.e. motors) load does not like to have its current interrupted. It has 'inertia', for lack of a better layman's term.
At higher power levels, the electrical current in the air will superheat the air into plasma, and then the electrons can flow freely from atom to atom, just like in a metal. At those sustained temperatures, the copper conductors will vaporize and violently expand. Once this occurs, it feeds itself violently until something happens to end it (an upstream breaker, the resulting explosion extinguishes the arc, etc.).
Medium and High voltage switchgear extinguish the arc of opening a circuit under load by a variety of methods: opening contacts in a vacuum bottle (no air to turn into conductive plasma), using a magnetic field to exert an electromagnetic force on the current flowing in the air to make the arc too long to be self-sustaining, using a blast of air to dissipate the conductive plasma, opening contacts in an inert gas (no free electrons to ionize into a plasma), or opening contacts in oil (no free electrons to ionize into a plasma, and no free oxygen to combust the oil at temperature).
Anyway, the vacuum bottle circuit bottles are vulnerable to the integrity of the vacuum bottle and sealing diaphragms in a high vibration industrial environment. In an environment with cheap vacuum, the cost of safely distributing electrical power would be drastically reduced.